[Joe Forster/STA]

As this is partly a, shall we say, "hidden attack" against my person, let me clear up a few things...

The mysterious moderator DABhand is talking about is me. Obviously, there must have been a reason why I became a moderator and still am one. I'm not saying I never made mistakes but I'm willing to learn from them. In many cases, I discussed things with the other moderators and they mostly agreed with me. (This applies especially to the cases mentioned by DABhand!) (And don't think that I'm such a charming personality and other moderators are so enchanted by it that they follow my every command. Nope, they have their own opinion and we don't always agree.) So, when I'm being pointed at as some evil guy, please, think about why my decisions were not overruled by other moderators or Empire himself.

Yes, I agree, I have also been harrassing people breaking the forum rules in the past when I was not yet a moderator. That's not good; I'm still wondering why past moderators let it/me/us go on. This, along with the known fact that I'm not really good friends with DABhand, is the reason why I've been trying to avoid him as some serious reciprocations from me would have seemed to be on a personal basis. This is something a moderator can't afford to do as it would cast a bad shadow on the forum itself. Another something a moderator can't afford is harrassing people; if you look at my posts, their "offensiveness" level has been decreasing since I became a moderator.

However, exactly the two cases mentioned were one the reasons finally leading to introducing "don't moderate" explicitly in the forum rules. And, yes, we moderators decided that, instead of acting in a harsher way, some of DABhand's unnecessary posts will be deleted without notice so that he gets the message. Well, his posts definitely got much more to the point and the unnecessary ones much rarer which we most welcomed. (First, I also sent a few warning PM's - not warnings, infractions or bans! - for some posts that simply mentioned the forum rules to newbies but I was overruled - yay, did that really happen?! -, saying that non-offensive reminders from forum members should also be accepted.) Also, if I remember correctly, DABhand has been explicitly notified about the changes in the forum rules and asked to report offending posts instead of replying (perhaps, in an offending way) to them. And, believe me, authors of other offending posts do get their deserved warnings, infractions or bans - it might be a mistake that we don't always post a reply about this fact into the thread, though...

As for always referring newbies to the FAQ, that's an exaggeration. Specific questions are answered with the same specificness, but are generic questions supposed to be answered again and again? I don't think so. Reading the fucking manual (or FAQ) is a habit that people should be reminded of always, everywhere, every time; getting used to doing it pays off very well in the long run. As for not packaging this into a nice, long reply... well, lack of time to answer generic questions again and again was also the reason for creating a FAQ in the first place, right? You see, why bother to come up with tons of possible solutions when you don't even know what version and language of the game the poster has, what hardware and operating system he has, whether or not he has tried to usual general solutions. One would think people first read the FAQ and ask their questions with mentioning that yes, they have read the FAQ, tried this, this and this and none of them helped; then can another forum member do something useful by continuing with other specific answers. (This does not apply to this forum only but to any forum where non-expert people seek help.)

With power comes responsibility. I do feel that I've been acting mostly in a a responsible way as a moderator - firmly but not harshly - and I will continue to do so. You don't know a lot about what's going on in the background and, well, it might not even be your business. I'm open to suggestions that make sense, though, so if "there is a bit of talk" - how do you know? have forum members contacted you and complained about the behavior of moderators instead of sending the complaint directly to us? were those righteous complaints or just whines about getting warned/banned for something obviously against the forum rules? - then let it be known. (Perhaps, in a different thread.) Yes, maybe the forum rules are just too tight and we're enforcing it too rigidly. Well, then what is the plan of loosening things a bit, while still keeping warez kiddies off the forum - in order to avoid the forum from becoming a complete mess and/or getting shut down by gaming companies - and making "is this a warez discussion or not?" decisions as simple as possible? We've seen so many tricks and tales in the past years and all these have been added to the forum rules so that noone can say we didn't warn everyone clearly enough about them. (Or would you like to get banned about something that is not explicitly covered by the forum rules but the moderators don't like it for some other, secret reason?!)

But, as long as the newest set of forum rules are in effect, I ask everyone to not reply to insults and not get entangled in flame wars; report them instead with the traffic sign symbol. Also, if you see posts breaking the forum rules and decide to not report them (why?!) but instead remind the other forum user - most probably, a newbie - of the forum rules then do it in a civilized way: if my usual "read the PC Games forum FAQ" reply is considered hardly acceptable then "[...], you idiot!" (not a specific quote from anyone, just an exaggerating example!) and similar replies should be considered completely unacceptable.